


Hunted Like the Chamois

by Professional_Creeper



Category: Frankenstein & Related Fandoms, Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gender-neutral Reader, Hugs, Human/Monster Romance, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, No Smut, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Reader-Insert, Suicidal Thoughts, the creature survives the north pole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 18:01:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20916245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Professional_Creeper/pseuds/Professional_Creeper
Summary: Your mercenary unit was hired to hunt down a monster that has been lurking in the forest, terrifying villagers. But something about this job bothers you. The creature looks frightening, but is he actually dangerous?





	Hunted Like the Chamois

You were the one who found it. The one who followed those enormous tracks, too impossibly large to be human, through the forest. Even as you led your mercenary unit right to it, you still refused to believe the monster the villagers spoke of was real. But, sure as a bloodhound, you found it.

You were the reason the monster was crashing through the undergrowth just ahead, shambling, snapping branches, and crushing logs beneath it. It roars, an unholy noise like a rusted iron fence lodged inside a bear.

You are scared senseless.

The other mercenaries rush forward to attack the creature, shouting a battle cry. It swats them away viciously, knocking one assailant into a tree, another to the ground. They fall as easily as the sticks beneath its feet—mice attacking a cat. Its distorted face contorting with rage and pain, the monster wrenches their weapons away, and lifts them above its head to swing down in a final death blow… but stops. With a fierce roar that sends shivers down your spine, he snaps the weapons like dry kindling, and tosses the splinters aside.

All of the rest of your group are down. You are the only warrior left.

The towering cadaver looks up and sees you, still frozen to the spot. You clutch your weapon hard enough to turn your knuckles white, and raise it with a trembling grip. It lunges toward you, gnashing its shockingly white teeth with a deathly snarl.

You squeeze your eyes shut and brace for the attack, cowering.

You were never a fighter. Your skill was in tracking, and stealth. All this demon has to do is slam into you, and it will break every bone in your body. But that blinding pain followed by death never comes.

You open your eyes, and it’s gone.

That thing didn’t hurt you? You look down at your in-one-piece body in disbelief. You’re alive! A nervous laugh escapes unbidden from your mouth, which you feel guilty about immediately, considering everyone else in your unit is—

“Oi…what’s… funny?” one of your comrades groans, face-down on the ground.

Everyone is still breathing, you realize, surveying the bodies. It never attacked you, because you never attacked it, and it didn’t even kill the ones who _did_ attack—not a single one. It only fought them until they stopped fighting.

A sudden gut feeling gripped you. What if it’s not actually a monster?

It’s completely against your cautious nature—a reckless, mad impulse—but the feeling grips like a vice and won’t let go. Before any of the others can wake up and see where you’ve gone, you dash into the woods, taking off after the creature.

* * *

The monster’s size and clumsiness as he moved in the thick woods left an easy path to follow, but he was _fast_. It’s nearly dark by the time you follow the trail to its end at a cave in the mountains. You tracked him for miles in the opposite direction of any settlement you know of, and the mouth of the cave is sheltered from wind and view by the mountain’s slope. A perfect refuge.

You move quietly, hoping to find him before he finds you. You’d like to observe him a little first. After all, you don’t know who or what he is… it’s only a hunch that he’s not dangerous.

A shadow falls across your back. You turn slowly, stiffly, already certain what you will see. A guttural, rust-scraping snarl knocks you off your feet; the hulking corpse towers over you.

Up close he’s even worse than you remember. His face is a twisted skull, with a patchwork of sallow, mismatched skin barely stretched over the bone and muscle beneath. Each crudely stitched fragment of flesh in the mosaic of his body is a paler, more stomach-turning hue than the last. Yet a corpse he is not—the visible pulsing of dark blood in his veins is ghoulish proof of life. A stormy sea of black hair spills in tangles down his broad shoulders.

“WHY DID YOU FOLLOW ME?” he shouts. You fall to the ground and retreat, crawling backwards as he advances on you. He leans his tall form down closer and closer to you as you writhe on the floor, as if to prevent you escaping his words. “Must I be hounded by your kind wherever I go? I only want peace, solitude, but you always find me. Must it be war between us, human? I did not wish to kill you, but I will not surrender my life. If you insist upon making war against me, then war it must be! I cannot allow you to lead more back to my sanctuary. You should not have followed!”

“N-no-no!” you cry, shielding your face from the impending fatal blow, trembling violently.

Everything goes black.

* * *

You wake up in a dark cave, next to a small, crackling fire. It is night, judging by the singing of insects outside. The creature sits with his back to you, poking the burning logs with a stick. He doesn’t turn around, but must have heard you stirring.

“You passed out,” the giant grumbles irritably. “I had to build a fire to keep your weak body from going into shock. The smoke risks leading others to my position.”

“Th-thank you. For not killing me. Again.”

He shrugs a shoulder, barely moving it. He stays fixated on the fire.

“I knew it. I knew you weren’t trying to hurt us. That’s why I had to…” You pause. “You can talk!”

“_Quel désastre!_ You have discovered my greatest secret,” he replies in a flat, sarcastic tone so sharp you could dig a hole with it to bury yourself in.

You squirm in place on the bed of dry grasses and blankets he made for you, cheeks heating up. “Sorry… of course you can talk. I just, before, I didn’t know. We didn’t know. A village hired us to get rid of a monster that had been sighted. I thought it was just superstitious nonsense, but when you were real… I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t think monsters could talk.”

“Why did you come?” he snaps impatiently. “You came alone, so you must be a scout. But you are a fool to think you could complete your mission after my display of superiority today. I could kill you easily.”

“I came because I realized you’re a bear!”

He stops poking the fire. His head tilts in bemusement.

“A lot of people think bears are dangerous,” you explain. “But any hunter who has spent time in the woods knows a bear will never attack unless you threaten it first. Even animals seen as cold and evil, like snakes… usually, people only get bitten because they were trying to kill it! If you leave something alone, even if it looks frightening, it usually won’t hurt you. When we got this job, I thought it was interesting that none of the villagers had actually been hurt. They just wanted you gone because they were afraid, nothing else.”

“That is the way humans are,” he says solemnly in his low, hoarse voice.

“I know. But not all of us,” you smile.

“Not you?”

“I like bears. I’ll hunt down a wolf if it’s gone rabid, or a criminal, but I won’t destroy something out of fear alone. I just… wanted to meet you. You’re not a monster at all. You’re not a killer.”

While you were speaking, his shoulders had grown less tense, and his breathing deeper, more regular, as if he was beginning to realize you might be a friend, not an enemy. That you might understand each other. But as you finish, he goes rigid. He whips around, his thin black lips curled into a snarl. There is a reason he kept his back to you this whole time—the shock of that skull of a face sets you back on your heels, and makes all your kind words, which were easy to believe in theory, stick in your throat.

“You have no idea what I am,” he hisses, suddenly enraged. He tells you. It is a story he has held inside for a long time with nobody to tell, as it is soon made clear he has been in solitude since the beginning of his life. He describes the process by which he was made in explicit detail, daring you to turn in disgust and run.

But you don’t leave. You are unwavering listening to his tale, and look at him with growing sympathy until he can no longer meet your gaze and turns away in shame.

He starts to shake. “I am a killer.” In the dark, soft sobs pass his lips, which he tries in vain to disguise as breathing. “When I found Victor, all I wanted was revenge for the misery he inflicted upon me, for creating a sensitive being who yearned to know love, yet too hideous and wretched to ever be loved—nay, even tolerated. And even he, my creator, had abandoned me, had left me to learn life’s cruel lessons in unbearable solitude.

“I killed William. William, whose only sin was being Victor Frankenstein’s brother. I crushed that poor child’s throat with my bare hands. These hands. I made sure a beautiful young girl, the nanny, would be blamed and hung for my crime—because it would bring misery upon my creator, or simply because I hated that a woman such as she could never love me? I slew his best friend, then his bride, because he would not create a mate to be my companion. What a fool I was to think he would bring a second murderous wretch into this world—Victor was wise, in the end. His father died of a broken heart, unable to bear the sorrow I had wrought upon his family. And finally, when Victor could take no more, he succumbed to the elements in his pursuit of me.

“William. Justine. Henry. Elizabeth. Alphonse. Victor.” He lists the names slowly. “My crimes are a lead anchor around my soul. I deserved to die for them. I wanted to die. I swore I would set myself upon a funeral pyre and burn until I felt no more joy nor pain. But I could not bring myself to it, coward that I am.

“Victor died aboard an explorer’s ship, on a voyage to discover the northern pole. I vowed to the captain that I would collect my funeral pile upon that very pole, and yet when I reached the northern extremity, I found to my dismay nothing whatsoever combustible. The land was a sheet of ice upon the sea. And so I delayed my end until I could journey to a land whose climate supported wood-bearing vegetation.

“By the time I found myself on the shores of Norway, it was springtime once again. The land was so alive with beauty, I wept. I did not know such feelings could still be excited within my cold chest. Still, I felt the weight of my crimes, I was alone and joyless, and I remembered my promise to the captain. I gathered fallen branches and driftwood on an uninhabited island into a pyre, and set it ablaze.

Yet before I could destroy myself upon the flames, a little white-throated bird flitted along the beach, and, landing on a jagged rock, began to sing a cheerful, tinny song. I watched the bird, and I thought I should like to hear the end of its song. And then I watched the clever fellow gather insects along the water, and thought I should like to know where he was going. And thus I delayed my purpose with one and then another distractions until I lost the courage to end my wretched life.”

You can only stare at his tear-streaked face, your own cheeks wet, unable to say a word. Your mouth opens and closes a few times, but there was no response adequate to this story.

He notices your eyes focused intensely on him.

“It’s easier if you don’t look at me,” he suggests softly. “I find humans are only able to speak with me as a fellow-being if they cannot see me.”

“It-it’s not that!” you whine, lip trembling. Your arms fly around him before he realizes what’s happening. Your head leans over his shoulder, and you squeeze him tightly.

He doesn’t know what to do. He has never been hugged before. His body tenses like a rigid stone, expecting an attack. With a stuttered exhale, he relaxes into your touch. His arms surround and nearly embrace you, hovering inches from your body, but afraid to touch it. Suddenly he stiffens again, and then softens again, repeating the cycle several more times, so intensely you worry he may be having a seizure. You have no idea what is normal for his body. Finally, he settles into trembling. You straddle his lap to hang on through the convulsions, and hold him tighter.

“Why?” he gasps.

“It isn’t cowardice to live with your mistakes,” you weep into his hair. “What takes courage is to learn from them. You grow, and change, and become better. ”

“And what if I grow worse? I was once innocent, and happy in my ignorance of the world. I hurt no one and took joy in the sunlight and the songs of birds. Then I grew, and I changed. I am no longer a gentle creature of the forest, intimidating only in appearance. I am a monster, a rabid creature overtaken by madness.”

“Yet, you don’t kill me. You could have killed my team easily, but you didn’t. You’ve changed into a person who wouldn’t even hurt his enemies. You can change in good ways, too.”

He shakes violently, letting out a sob. His hands graze your body, but still shy away from full contact. “Do you believe that? How could you be sure of it when I do not know myself? And even if my desire to live a harmless life can be granted, nothing can erase the crimes of my past.”

“I know,” you breathe. “It’s not my place to forgive you, or tell you how you can atone, but… I know that guilt haunts you so heavily, you would do anything to avoid adding to the burden. That list of names—your past—is your promise to never give in to darkness again. You can’t undo what happened, but… I meet a lot of killers in my line of work, and I can tell that’s not you anymore. You deserve a second chance.”

You rearrange yourself on his lap, pulling back to arm’s length to meet his eyes. They are the same sickly dun color with deep, dark sockets, but his countenance doesn’t frighten you anymore. Perhaps in a strange way, knowing how he was created made it easier to bear. Or he was less intimidating with his eyes overflowing with hot tears, instead of cold anger.

You put a hand to his cheek, wet, cool, and bumpy with stitches, scars, and wrinkles. His eyes widen.

“You said all you’ve ever wanted is a companion, right? I’ll keep you company now. We’ll get better together.”

His arms close around you, pulling you against his chest, clinging to you desperately.

“All right.”


End file.
